Letters to the editor: Feb. 7

If you need some laws to enforce, how about these?

Would everyone just step back and observe just how anxious the government is to enforce the laws of the land?

We slap the wrists of repeated drunken driving offenders, but do little about it. We fail to protect our borders, but prosecute those who try. We arrest illegal aliens and give them four days to report to immigration officials in Chicago, with no follow up. It is like pulling teeth to get a non-supportive parent to pay up.

But we rush right out there to arrest good Samaritans who rescue an injured deer and threaten them with fines and jail time, when the admitted alternative was to euthanize the deer.

Fortunately, the outcry of the public came to bear on the situation so that the big bad Department of Natural Resources dropped the charges - ones that no one with half a brain would have ever brought in the first place.

Yes, I understand that it is in the best interest of wild animals to not become too familiar with humans. It is also in the best interest of injured wild animals to have someone step forward to rescue them and restore them to health.

The DNR's own statement said we have 24 hours in which we should report the injured animal to "the skilled hands of the DNR" to care for the animal, after stating they'd euthanize it.

To the state: Look around you. There are laws worthy of enforcement. Now, go find them.

E. Lloyd Wells

Lafayette

Counting out the debt and
all those years to a trillion

I am a World War II veteran who collects snippets of information.

It troubles me to see that the national debt is $16.4 trillion and counting.

I have an old newspaper clipping that describes a trillion dollars:

"A trillion dollars is hard to comprehend. Here's a way to describe it: If you were to hand over a dollar every second of every minute, night and day, it would take 11 days to reach one million. One billion would take 31 years. One trillion would take future generations 31,000 years."

Ward C. Johnson

Idaville

Who would want to see Mitch Daniels' old RV One, anyway?

Regarding a December story, why would anyone want to see a display of RV One, former Gov. Mitch Daniels' campaign vehicle?

There's nothing special about it. So a politician rode around in it. No big deal about that. Also, that unmarked state police car in the picture escorting Daniels' RV seems to be following pretty close.

Paul Eisen

Monticello

About those consitutional questions and real patriots

Those who maintain that states can decide which federal laws are constitutional are not patriots. They are Rip Van Winkles sleeping through two centuries of American history.

In 1832, South Carolina voted to nullify a federal tariff. The state backed down when President Andrew Jackson threatened to send troops to enforce the law. The supremacy clause in the Constitution (Article VI) means that a traveler doesn't have to worry about which federal laws are applicable in a particular state.

Recently 125,746 supporters of the Texas Nationalist Movement signed a petition calling on Texas to secede from the union. It cost 750,000 lives, but Abraham Lincoln squelched secession.

Most controversies involving the Constitution relate to interpretation. The originalists believed that the intent of the Founding Fathers determines the constitutionality of a topic. If they failed to address a subject, it is unconstitutional to do so now. Those opposing the originalists consider the Constitution a "living" document, capable of being interpreted to meet changing conditions.

The precedent for their method of interpretation dates to 1819. Maryland proposed to tax a national bank operating within the state, contending it was unconstitutional. Daniel Webster won the case for the feds arguing: "It is not enough to say ... that a bank was not in the contemplation of the framers of the Constitution. It was not in their intentions ... to enumerate particulars. ... If (a bank) be a fit instrument for an authorized purpose, it may be used, not being specifically prohibited."